Nicaragua

Our 150th coffee review and it comes from Nicaragua - which came to us directly from a roaster in York. The beans were still warm when we got them. Here's our review...

There’s not much in there – it’s a light weight pack and we only got 8 cups from it. Mainly because this feels like a very lightly roasted coffee – when we mixed this up with four spoons, the flavour was buried beneath the taste of water. So we had to crank it right up to five heaped spoons – which is the level this one needs. At that point though it suffers a little from a metallic after taste. The flavour’s generally good though – quite caramel like and not over powering - So, overall it’s nice enough but a bit of a fiddle to make it right – and you won’t get many attempts with such a small dosage in the pack. I've not had a dose this small since that night with Little Jimmy Cranky. (7/10)

This is the first Percol for us, a new brand, and we're excited. But chocolate? Orange Marmalade??!! What are these people talking about? Have they any idea what coffee is or do they think they're making breakfast? How long before they are quoting Bacon Overtones with a smooth Egg finish? As if that flowery bullshit introduction wasn't enough to make you feel this is all style over content, wait until you open the packet.. it's full of TWIGS I kid you not. OK I may be exaggerating a little bit, but the coffee really is full of dried husks.. this can't be good. So Judge Hank makes this one, and swears by it. Six spoons for a strength 4 should be good. Hmmm.... no. It's weedy. It's not bad - but it's not good. There's nothing really to say about it - it's just adequate catering coffee. The only good thing to say is that the twigs didn't actually ruin it, as this is one coffee that I really was expecting to be "woody"! The only hope is to really spoon it up next time, to see if there's any hidden depths. Mind you it's the first coffee reviewed to warrent a second picture. Disappointedly a 5/10

We were messed up here by having to siphon some of the brew off from the pot to dilute down for "a girl". Of course this threw out all our weights and measures which means we are comparing this unfairly with all the others. But my God this came out a right little belter - stronger than Geoff Capes and with more staying power than a Rutting Stag. We ended up with tons of powder in the cup though, giving a really dry finish - enough powder to start growing more coffee in. This has got to be down to the brewing - an own brander can't be this good can it? Rated a tentative 8/10.